Three Poems by Nolo Segundo

 

                          

GETTYSBURG, REDUX 

 

 

Now the happy soldiers 

Go to fight again the battle, 

Marching bravely forty abreast 

With heavy muskets shouldered, 

Yelling their cries of pain and glory 

As they face the cold cannon 

Barking like a pack of mad dogs. 

 

Down they go in ones and twos, 

And sometimes in little bunches, 

Collapsing together as though 

Put to sleep by the fairy dust 

Of long forgotten dreams. 

 

Both sides feel the urge 

To kill, to step the victor 

O’er their brothers’ bones. 

Grown men playing—yes 

Even perhaps a bit silly—but 

Maybe, just maybe, 

Some of them are unaware 

Of their own anguished deaths 

There on that sweating day 

Not really so very long ago. 

 

At seventeen I went to that town 

To talk of my education and  

In the warm afternoon 

I meandered mindlessly  

Amidst the boulders named  

Fearfully for Satan’s lair. 

There suddenly, terribly, 

While walking between two 

Of the giant stones, my body 

Shuddered, an awful shaking 

That shook me to the core  

Of my soul, but then I did not yet 

Know we never die only once.

Sacred Things 

 

Every human heart is a church, 

A sacred temple, a holy mosque, 

And God is found within  

In measure to its love. 

 

Some say 

There are no miracles: 

Look around, I say, 

And then see— 

A fat baby laughing,  

A new cloak of silken snow, 

A heart beating 90 years, 

A mind seeing inside…. 

 

What is an orchid 

If not a miracle? 

What is love 

If not the wonder  

Of the universe?

SATORI 

 

 

From where are born 

These little dreams 

Made only of words? 

The secret part of 

My myriad mind? 

Or someplace much, 

Much deeper, far  

Beyond form, 

Beyond time, 

Beyond even God? 

 

 

I know not—for  

Each comes like  

A solo songbird 

Suddenly sitting 

On the sill of an 

Open window,  

Singing its brief 

Song just for  

You while you 

Try, try hard 

To recall it all 

And share it  

With a tiny  

Slice of this 

Vast world. 

 

And if you  

Can catch  

The song, 

And seed  

It into a 

Poem, then  

Another may 

Dream and  

Dream and  

Dream….

Nolo Segundo, pen name of L.J.Carber, became a widely published poet in his mid-70's in over 140 literary journals/anthologies in America, Canada, England, Romania, Scotland, Portugal, Australia, Sweden, India and Turkey. A trade publisher has released 3 book length collections: The Enormity of Existence [2020], Of Ether and Earth [2021], and Soul Songs [2022]. These titles like much of his work reflect the awareness he's had since having an NDE when as a 24 year old agnostic-materialist, believing only matter was real and so death meant extinction, he lept into a Vermont river in an attempt to end the suffering of a major clinical depression. He learned that day the utter reality that poets, Plato, and Jesus have spoken of for millennia: that every sentient human has a consciousness that predates birth and survives death--a soul. A retired teacher [America, Japan, Taiwan, and Cambodia in the mid-70's] he's been married 43 years to a smart and beautiful Taiwanese woman.